Wigan Team Kaobon star Jack's bid for top martial arts award

Schoolboy Jack Grundy has recently been nominated for the Best Young Martial Artist of the Year award.
Jack GrundyJack Grundy
Jack Grundy

Jack, who attends Deanery High School, was one of 14 teenagers across the nation to be shortlisted for the prize.

The youngster has been wrestling since being four years old and began to learn the art of other disciplines when he turned nine.

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Jack trains with Team Kaobon, which is based in Wigan and run by dad Mike Grundy.

The 13-year-old now competes regularly in multiple combat sports and has achieved national success on several occasions.

Throughout his sporting career to date, Jack is a five-time British Wrestling champion, a five-time English Wrestling champion, and a two-time British Ju-Jitsu champion.

He has also enjoyed glory on the global stage, becoming the European Ju-Jitsu champion in 2015, in the male grey junior 2 under 38kg category.

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Jack captured the 2018 Naga Championship belt in April, before swooping gold last month in a Derbyshire-based wrestling competition.

He is joined in the vote by some of the best young athletes from across the United Kingdom, with the winner being determined by an online voting system on YouTube.

The rising star has seen a short-documentary made about him to parade his achievements and give the public an insight to his personality and martial-arts ability, which voters can view to vote for the Wiganer to win the award.

Dad Mike has urged the community to support his son.

He said: “There are so many good athletes in the list, but he has a great chance of winning. It’s going to depend on the public voting for him online.

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“It’s very important for people to vote, but I’ve always said the Wigan community are great for getting behind their own.

“I’m sure the Wigan community can get behind him.”

Grundy, who has enjoyed a fruitful career to date after most famously winning a bronze medal at the

Commonwealth Games in 2014, believes his son will exceed his own achievements.

He said: “I think he’ll do better than I’ve ever done. He even says that himself, but I like his attitude.

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“He says to me: ‘I don’t want to do what you’ve done, Dad, I want to do more!’

“I like that because you’ve got to aim as high as you can, and that’s a really positive attitude to have.

“I would like him to follow my footsteps but do better than I am doing now, which is what he always tells me he’s going to do.

“My Dad always says Jack is better than I was at his age, so I think that will be a possibility.”

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Grundy, 31, says he has taught his son to believe in his own ability since a young age.

“I believe he has the potential to be something great, but he knows he has to work hard,” Grundy said.

“He’s doing really well. I don’t tell him that all the time, because I think it’s important he keeps focused.

“I think the problem is, if you keep telling people how talented they are, they will tend to rely on the talent instead of working hard.

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“One of Jack’s main attributes in sport is his confidence, and he believes whatever he does that he’s going to win no matter what against anyone.

“And I have always sort of built that into him.

“That’s not something I had as a younger kid, I just did it from my technical ability.

“But as far as confidence, I wasn’t the most confident, so I thought when Jack was growing up, that’s what I’ll make sure he has.”

You can vote for Jack to become the 2018 Warrior Collective Best Young Martial Artist of the Year’, by clicking like, share and comment “#TeamGrundy” on the following YouTube video: youtube.com/watch?v=mGn98YK_DfM